Evangelists Service Team Report November, 2011

The Evangelists Committee is encouraged by the continued progress that God is producing in our worldwide fellowship of churches. More souls are being saved and our geographic regions are getting stronger, healthier, and more functionally dynamic. The American churches just completed their first American Leadership Conference hosted by the Boston Church. The ALC was a tremendous success, addressing the growth needs of our churches through workshops broken down by size. Douglas Arthur and the entire Boston leadership are to be commended for this inspirational conference.

The committee is also encouraged by the response to our upcoming 2012 World Discipleship Summit in San Antonio, Texas July 5-8, 2012. Already over 3300 have registered. The Summit will host 8 conferences going on at the same time. Each evening we will all come together for worship services of over 10,000. These will be the largest worship services in the history of our fellowship.

The development for a unified curriculum has made great progress in the last several months. We have developed a consensus among the Evangelists, Elders and Teachers service teams to pursue a course of action that will develop a program that can be implemented around the world in the training of our ministry staff. The proposal is before the Delegates for their approval in Budapest this December. Perhaps the most exciting development is the formation of a Board of Development that would be comprised of representatives from the Elders, Teachers and Evangelist groups; this Board will help us shape the concepts and oversee the development of the curriculum.

During our last few meetings with the Delegates, we taught and disseminated information to everyone on the Best Practices of a Healthy Region that we felt were taking place in our fellowship. We are encouraging and helping regional families of churches around the world to develop and publish their own 2020 Vision. We also encouraged the collection of some statistics on an annual basis, relating to church growth. Last year, a collective attempt was made for the first time and they were sent to Roger Lamb, Chair of the Communication & Administration Team for consolidation. These numbers were given out to all members of the Evangelist Committee when they met earlier in 2011. Discussions took place informally among themselves on the progress of the churches in their regions. We hope that this trend will continue and that churches and regions that are healthy will be able to continue to help others that have been experiencing road blocks, such as increasing in growth and unity. For this reason the global Delegates Conference for 2011 is being held in Budapest to provide inspiration and encouragement to the churches in Europe.

The 2011 Delegate Meeting in Budapest promises to be our most productive yet. We will study these lesson topics together: (1) Vision & Faith, (2) Unity, (3) Mission, and (4) Discipling. We will not only be able to have great fellowship and vote on the proposals, but we will also have a time for our group of Delegates to be in the creation of direction, and ideas. In a constructive way, this plan expands our tank of ideas and cultural and global experiences. Also our perspectives grow from a group of 17 to a group of 100. This changes the dynamic from Delegates just coming together to be "informed", to our actually working together. We will seek God’s guidance in 6 areas where many people feel there needs to be global collaboration. Everyone will be able to participate and provide insight, ideas, and convictions for the various topics. We believe that will be a great opportunity for the Spirit to work in an amazing way!

Missions SubCommittee Progress Report

The purpose of the missions committee has been:

to access the opportunities and resources we have on a global scale to fulfill our mission.

to evaluate our efficiency and organization in accomplishing God’s mission around the world.

This year our focus has been to address the financial needs of ‘giving churches’ and ‘receiving churches’. Our proposal to the international Delegates Meeting is for the ‘giving churches’ to maintain a consistent or yearly missions offering through 2020. This commitment to missions would allow the receiving churches to focus on building their churches. Our evaluation showed that many receiving churches still spend too much time year after year traveling to different churches seeking and scrambling for support. This affects their ability to build a multiplying ministry, which would save more souls and inspire the “giving churches.”

Our proposal and the ultimate goal for the ‘receiving churches’ is to move towards self-sufficiency. We recommend the model used by the African churches that has been effective to support missions within their local geographic areas. Their model includes a 5-point practical plan. Our committee recommends this platform be shared with all ‘receiving churches’ for consideration and implementation. This plan involves eliminating wasteful spending by monitoring and evaluating church expenses as well as establishing boards with a clear mission and vision for their geographic area including quarterly reports and proper church audits. Also, we are encouraging a five year challenge to grow, raise up leaders and invest in next generation ministries.